Empire Top 100 videogames list

[DomsBeard]

http://www.empireonline.com/features/10 ... ?title=100

Noticed this today, number one makes sense with it being a film mag primarily. I'm delighted both Shenmue's are in! [emoji7]

[ratsoalbion]

Worth saying that this top 100 is the result of a reader poll rather than the debated findings of an editorial pow-wow.
As such of course it's unfailingly democratic, representative of the (equally contemporaneous and nostalgic) tastes of Empire's readership as a whole and therefore no individual will 'agree' with most of it!

[DomsBeard]

Yeah I guessed as much with TLOU being number one as it's very movie like.

[KissMammal]

I know there's little point in arguing with a democratic list like this, but part of the fun of these things is seeing some of the egregiously undeserving ones that somehow snuck in - for example Empire's recent '100 Greatest Films of All Time' included Prometheus, which doesn't even belong in a list of the 100 best films that came out in 2012 in my opinion.

WTF entries for me: Crash Bandicoot, Max Payne, Call of Juarez, and surprised to see Goldeneye so high up on the list - I wonder if the voters have actually tried to play it in the last ten years?

I must commend them on their extraordinarily sharp screenshot captures though!

[Todinho]

No Platinum games yet Bioshock Infinite and Heavy Rain(love this game but c'mon) made the cut, 0/10

[KissMammal]

I'm not too surprised about the lack of Platinum, Empire is going to skew mainstream and their games are very niche and obtuse almost by design - I consider myself a big gamer and even I really couldn't get on with Bayonetta or Vanquish. I just didn't like them on a design/aesthetic level.

[Scrustle]

While Platinum yet again getting snubbed in stuff like this is sad, I don't think that list is particularly bad. I wouldn't personally agree with all of it, and I think some stuff should be re-ordered, but there's a good mix of really great games there. I think for most of them you could argue definitely are some of the best games ever. And they even do have some strange, niche Japanese stuff there. Okami for example. Maybe not a particularly hard game to understand, but not one which has gotten much recognition outside of the core audience. Also made by Platinum before they were Platinum. Chrono Trigger is there, a bunch of Zelda games, the Shenmue games, SotC, the MGS games, Kingdom Hearts, and even Dark Souls. And they even have some Western oddities too, like Vampire Bloodline (I didn't even think that was popular enough), Grim Fandango, and the original Deus Ex.

Call of Juarez is a really odd addition though. Some third-rate budget FPS from a few years ago? Really? Not even the latest one which people said was actually good? I think having The Last of Us at #1 is kind of rubbish too. That's way too recent to say whether it's the best game of all time. I doubt quite a lot that'll be thought of that way in say, ten years time.

But yeah, whatever. A reader poll from a site that normally focuses on film. Based on that context though, I think they actually did a pretty good job.

[ratsoalbion]

A big problem with the ranking of (unquantifiable) things is that it's rarely made clear if you are voting for the best games of all-time, as in how good they were at the time (say, GoldenEye in 1997) or whether you're stacking them up squarely against more recent games in terms of what people would like to play today.

Generally even if the criteria are stipulated many will vote with their hearts and their rose-tinted spectacles while others will have shorter memories (Empire's top 100 movies list nearly always has some very recent flicks that will clearly be nowhere near the top 100 in 5 years time), leaving a fun but meaningless list of broadly well-liked games in a worthless order.

I actually enjoy reading features like this, heck I've written some, but ultimately they're just a fluffy excuse for re-celebrating some popular titles.

[arry_g]

For the very reasons that Leon has stated I realise that these lists are nothing but fun discussion starters. No-one is ever going to nod and agree and say "spot on dude" but a good list is one that gets you talking about why you agree and how you disagree with entries. These lists rarely resonate me, how could it? My tastes (like most) are skewed towards certain types of experiences: I know for example that 20.82% of games I own fit comfortably in the RPG genre, 11.82% in the third person action adventure category and 10.5% are first person shooters. I know this because I keep records like a friggin' crazy person. Anyway, I digress - what I'm saying is that I know that a list is often going to be either so broad that it fails to hit some of the true gems in my leading three genres or would have to be genre specific to even hit my tastes.

What I would ask you reading this though, is what are your personal top 10 games? How many of those are on a list like this - bearing in mind the amount of people reading this sort of list all with gaming tastes that vary from my own or your own then if at least two or three of the games on this list are on yours then they've done well. My personal top 10 varies but it looks something like this I think:

01) Persona 4.
02) Grandia.
03) Final Fantasy VIII (yes VIII, how crazy I must me).
04) Metal Gear Solid 2.
05) Super Metroid.
06) Super Mario Bros. 3
07) The Legend of Zelda (NES).
08) Disgaea.
09) Chrono Trigger.
10) Planescape.

How many of these are because of how great a game they are I wonder? How many are based on memories of my childhood or because I associate them with certain periods of my life? It's all so damn subjective. That said though even with how specific my list is - a number of these are covered by Empire so it can't be that bad a list, covered many bases and it's got us talking about what we think of lists.

[KissMammal]

It's hard to quantify what is and isn't a 'good' or 'bad' game, and yes, nostalgia often clouds one's opinion. But I do firmly believe that Nintendo have always made the best games in the business for the simple reason that their games - on the whole - are so finely crafted that they still stand up 5, 10, or even 20+ years later while the vast majority of games date very quickly.

Super Mario Bros. is just as fun and intuitive now as it was in release. It's (IMO) genuinely hard to name 10 games on any older generation non-Nintendo console that really hold up today.

[Flabyo]

It's (IMO) genuinely hard to name 10 games on any older generation non-Nintendo console that really hold up today.

That sounds like a fun challenge! Depends how recent you're wanting to go with 'older generation' I guess... It's a little easier if we count the Megadrive and PC Engine for example.

[ratsoalbion]

As ever, how well something has aged is a subjective matter, but - although I love Nintendo's work to pieces myself - I have plenty of games in mind by other developers that I feel have aged every bit as elegantly, going as far back as the 70s.

[DomsBeard]

So here's my top ten off the top of my head (I'm including series)

10. Goldeneye
9. Shenmue 1 & 2
8. Metal Gear Solid
7. The Last Of Us
6. Final Fantasy VII
5. Metroid Prime
4. Fallout 3
3. Mass Effect 2 (1&3 )
2. Skyrim
1. Street Fighter 2

Picked those 10 on the fly and I'm already regretting not putting walking dead season one and heavy rain in

[arry_g]

As ever, how well something has aged is a subjective matter, but - although I love Nintendo's work to pieces myself - I have plenty of games in mind by other developers that I feel have aged every bit as elegantly, going as far back as the 70s.

Heck even the likes of Space Invaders or Pacman are inherently still fun, or at least I think so.

So here's my top ten off the top of my head (I'm including series)

10. Goldeneye
9. Shenmue 1 & 2
8. Metal Gear Solid
7. The Last Of Us
6. Final Fantasy VII
5. Metroid Prime
4. Fallout 3
3. Mass Effect 2 (1&3 )
2. Skyrim
1. Street Fighter 2

Picked those 10 on the fly and I'm already regretting not putting walking dead season one and heavy rain in

Oh god, Street Fighter 2... how did I forget you existed!!!

[DomsBeard]

[Alex79]

No Donkey Kong! Booooo! Best arcade game ever!!

[magicjoef]

When it is a poll like that, I always think of it as a snapshot of games that have made a big impact on players. I'm really pleased to see STALKER made its way on there!

[Combine Hunter]

My Top Ten:

Spoiler: show

[arry_g]

My Top Ten:

Spoiler: show

I love this! There's another element in all this of course is that as we grow older what we appreciate in our media changes too and therefor the orders od things can change.